Gulf of Mexico oil rig emergency alarm not fully activated the day of fire and explosion

KENNER, La. -- The emergency alarm on the Deepwater Horizon was not fully activated the day the oil rig caught fire and exploded, killing 11 people and setting off the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a rig worker Friday told a government panel investigating the accident.

The worker, Mike Williams, the rig's chief electronics technician, said the general safety alarm was habitually set to "inhibited" to avoid waking the crew with late-night sirens and emergency lights.

"They did not want people woke up at 3 a.m. from false alarms," Williams told the federal panel of investigators.

Consequently, the alarm did not sound during the emergency, leaving workers to relay information through the loudspeaker system.

While it is not known whether it would have saved the workers who died in the April 20 disaster, the lack of a fully functioning alarm hampered the effort to safely evacuate the rig, Williams said.

In a statement, Transocean, which leased the rig to BP, said workers were allowed to change settings on the alarm to prevent it "from sounding unnecessarily when one of the hundreds of local alarms activates for what could be a minor issue or a non-emergency."

"It was not a safety oversight or done as a matter of convenience," the company said.

Transocean also pointed to a separate audit of the rig in early April, in which inspectors testing the fire detection system found no detectors inhibited.

A six-member panel is investigating the disaster that unleashed the largest oil spill in U.S. history. At hearings this week here, crew members have described repeated failures in the weeks before the disaster, including power losses, computer crashes and leaking emergency equipment.

The rig's history of mechanical errors was documented in a confidential audit conducted by BP seven months before the explosion and reviewed by The New York Times. According to the September 2009 document, four BP officials discovered that Transocean, the rig's owner, had left 390 repairs undone, including many that were "high priority," and would require more than 3,500 hours of labor. It is unclear how many of the problems remained by the day of the catastrophe.

The 60-page audit found that previously reported errors had been ignored by Transocean.

"Consequently, a number of the recommendations that Transocean had indicated as closed out had either deteriorated again or not been suitably addressed in the first place," investigators wrote.

In a statement, BP said it had expected Transocean to take the audit seriously.

"The goal is to have the contractor address all safety critical items in a prompt manner," the statement said. "As we have previously said, the Deepwater Horizon tragedy had multiple potential causes, including equipment failure."

Follow Us

cleveland.com is powered by Plain Dealer Publishing Co. and Northeast Ohio Media Group. All rights reserved (About Us).The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Northeast Ohio Media Group LLC.